Floor hands work Monday June 27, 2016 at Abraxas Petroleum's Bullseye 101H well being drilled in the Austin Chalk formation in Atascosa County near Jourdanton, Texas. Drillers in Texas are on the cusp of beating the state’s 45-year-old oil-production record, even though the workforce supporting the oil industry in Texas is about the size it was in 2011, according to a report for Texas Alliance of Energy Producers.

Floor hands work Monday June 27, 2016 at Abraxas Petroleum's...

The oil industry will spend more money this year for the first time since an extended price crash started in 2014, with much of the money flowing to the Permian Basin in West Texas and eastern New Mexico, according to a new report.

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The 400-mile Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas isn’t as hot as the Permian Basin, but is expected to see a 28 percent bump in corporate spending.

Research firm Wood Mackenzie estimates global exploration and production spending at $450 billion this year, up 3 percent from last year, according to a new report.

It’s one more sign that the oil and gas industry has turned a corner since prices fell from a high of $107 per barrel in June 2014 and dipped as low $26 last February.

Oil closed at $53.06 per barrel Thursday, and other key measures of industry health have been rebounding, too. The number of active drilling rigs hunting oil or gas in the U.S. bottomed in May at 404 but reached 665 last week, according to oil field service firm Baker Hughes.

“I think there’s a level of optimism this year given the relative uptick in oil prices,” said Clay Lightfoot, an Houston-based analyst at Wood Mackenzie. “I think that’s going to give operators a little more confidence to allocate capital to their better assets.”

The bulk of U.S. oil company spending will again focus on the Permian Basin, which has been a bright spot during the industry’s dark times.

But Lightfoot said the Eagle Ford, too, will start drawing more dollars. Investments in the 26-county field that arcs across South Texas were as high as $28 billion in 2014 at the peak of the oil boom before operators started “pulling back, pulling back, pulling back,” Lightfoot said. “It was such a roller coaster.”

Spending in the Eagle Ford in 2017 will be around $9.7 billion, up from around $7.6 billion last year, he said.

Overall, Wood Mackenzie expects exploration and production companies to spend $61 billion in U.S. shale fields, where in recent years the industry has combined horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing. The technique pumps millions of gallons of water, chemicals and sand at high pressure to break tight rock and prop open the cracks, releasing oil and gas.

The $61 billion in spending would be an increase of 23 percent over last year but could rise even higher if oil prices continue improving and U.S. oil companies “are emboldened by a Trump presidency,” the firm said in its report.

The Permian’s Midland and Delaware basins have proved the most resilient U.S. oil fields, with low costs, plentiful oil and lots of companies looking to make deals to secure acreage.

In South Texas, much of the new drilling will concentrate in areas that produce a lot of the light oil condensate, especially around Karnes County, Lightfoot said, though several surrounding counties will also see some benefit. Operators are also continuing to test wells in the upper Eagle Ford and the Austin Chalk, the rock layer that lies atop the Eagle Ford.

Wood Mackenzie also expects higher global oil production in 2017 and that in the U.S., shale fields will lead the way for the industry’s revival.